Body parts found in August in a sewer beneath 15 Mile Road in Sterling Heights belonged to a white female with a large build, although her name remains a mystery, police said Monday.

An analysis of DNA samples sent to the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification revealed the gender, Sterling Heights police said. Previously, examination of the remains by the Macomb County Medical Examiner’s Office determined the person was white. However, the body parts had no identifying marks except for a partial tattoo.

Sterling Heights detectives have hoped the analysis will reveal DNA to help investigators determine whose body was cut.

The DNA results will be entered in state and federal database where they will be periodically checked for possible identification, police said.

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The 10 fleshy parts, all approximately the size of a softball, were found Aug. 15 by employees of a private sewer contractor working in a portion of the Oakland Macomb Interceptor, on 15 Mile Road at Maple Lane. The workers arrived for work in the morning and noticed the parts, which had flowed downstream and snagged on a platform the crews stood on about 50 feet beneath the road to seal cracks in the sewer line.

Following an autopsy in August by Macomb County Medical Examiner Dr. Daniel Spitz, police said afterward that the parts belonged to a Caucasian person but the gender and age of the person were unknown at the time.

The body parts included no bones and no internal organs, police said. Officials recently sent DNA samples to the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification/Department of Forensic and Investigative Genetics.

Officials publicly released photographs of parts of the design, hoping that someone might recognize it and provide useful information to investigators.

A couple of tattoo artists told Sterling Heights police that they believe the tattoo is approximately 15 years old, based on the fading and definition of the design, Lt. Luke Riley said.

At the time of the gruesome discovery, the body parts showed “little to no decomposition,” he said. That led police to conclude the parts were put into the sanitary line less than 24 hours earlier.

A spokesman for the Macomb County Department of Public Works said the body parts could have been dumped into the sewer anywhere from 24 Mile at Dequindre Road in Oakland County, downstream to Sterling Heights. Police said the body parts may have been placed into a narrower sanitary sewer line that flows into the Oakland Macomb Interceptor, which ranges in diameter from 9 ½ feet to nearly 13 feet, and not necessarily dropped into the sewer through a manhole.